Hate waiting a week for the next episode of Radio Rental? Subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus to get early access to episodes, add free listening and bonus scary stories. Visit TenderfootPlus.com for details. Take a break from the same old boring blockbusters and experience a new kind of movie night with Radio Rental. At Radio Rental, our videos come to life in your living room. Defy all logic and reasoning and make you question your own reality. This is not your ordinary video rental store. At Radio Rental, we carry one of our kind videos, so frightening, so mind-bending, you won't be able to sleep at night. You've gone. Radio Rental. Hey. What's up? You don't work here, right? Right, right, right. Makes sense because you walked in right after me. I'm just waiting for somebody to come out the back. But you're in. Yeah, it's cool. I wasn't going to tell you anything either, so we can both not talk. Liu. Liu. Look, I got my copy of Die Hard. I'm just going to scan it behind the desk and head on out. Please, give me the creeps, man. What the hell? Yo, there's like a bunch of instructions here. Oh shit. Okay, this envelope got Jeremy written on it. And that's my name, dude. I'm Jeremy. That's me. Jeremy. I'm not going to open it though, you know what I'm saying? My mama told me not to be nosy, but you know what? My mama knows he's here. I'm going to go ahead and open this. I'm going to open this up. Okay. All right. Hi. You run the store. Congratulations. Sign Terry. Who the fuck is Terry? Okay. There's also like a little yak back here. Oh man. You remember yak backs? You used to love those things, man. This one's got a stick. You know what I mean? It says play me, bro. All right. Hey, whoever you are. Oh, to whom this may concern. It's a Kirby Fitzhammer. The last caretaker of the shop. Just a few quick reminders. We already played the tapes with the red stickers on them. So skip those. People hate repeats. No repeats. Oh, and trash night is Thursdays. I definitely learned that the stinky hard way with some old long john silvers. Leftovers. Fish. And I think that's it. Awake and Malachi hates it when you don't mix his mush meat with hot warts. So who knew? He loves a good hot mush. Yo, who's Malachi? Go! Shhh. There's a cat here. Yo, I've been standing here for like 20 minutes now. I ain't seen the entire time, bro. But I saw I heard somebody in the back. Like a person like a big feet, not little paws. Well, this is kind of freaky as shit. The note says it's just following the instructions here. But what happens if I don't? Like this envelope had my freaking name on it. And I still don't know who the fuck Terry is. Is he gonna come for me? Is Terry a murderer? I don't know. Well, no. To be honest, I guess I've seen die hard like a lot of times. And I don't really have anything else to do today. That's why I'm at a video store. Getting die hard when I could just rent that shit on Amazon. So I guess, I guess I run the store now. All right. Who's store running? Here it goes. Welcome to Radio Rental. I'm a video rental shop with a collection of true scary stories all told by real people. That's right. For real? Herald and Tails straight from the people who experienced it. I'm in certain name here. And I'll be your host and shopkeeper today. Make light banter. Not too much because people hate when this part is too low. Okay. Okay, I probably shouldn't have read that out loud. And now I'm supposed to play you one of these VHS tapes from this cardboard box label secret collection. Just not any other ones with the red stickers on them. Okay. Okay, cool. All right. Okay, here we go. Every year, I plan this family trip. My two brothers and I and my two nephews. We always do something kind of as a family. Last summer, we were going to do some primitive campaign followed by like a nice cabin with a gamehouse and stuff like that. I found this place in Kentucky. It's on a privately owned farm. It was great because we like to take our dogs. We like to let them off leash. We like to swim. Privacy. We're kind of a big group and we just kind of want to be able to hang out and enjoy ourselves. You get to the farm and the campsite is like almost a full mile back off of the road. When we got there, you kind of roll up to the lake and there's a dock. No running water, no showers, nothing like that. Our campsite was on the far side of the lake. So we drove all the way back there and set up and it was nice. Our campsite was actually kind of tucked away under a bunch of trees. I had this really nice canopy so we were in a lot of shade and we were right on the lake. The first day, we were there. There were still people using the lake. We saw folks at other campsites and I knew that people would come and get day passes for this place. Come hang out, use the lake and then leave. We're just kind of checking things out and there were some other campers there. Across the lake there was a group of teens doing what teens do. They're having a good time, took it into the late night. The second day, we're kind of at our picnic table in the shade playing cards. It's pretty quiet at this point and I hear this buzzing sound. I mean we're nowhere near a freeway, there's nothing close. I shouldn't hear anything. And I looked up. There was a drone above us. It wasn't moving. We were under this canopy of trees so there's just this sliver of space for this drone to be looking at us. There's nobody else to watch. It's just watching us. It's hanging out. It's not like it was there for a bit. It checked on us, realized that we're boring and playing cards and left. It was there for a while. It was there long enough for me to kind of get annoyed and mad. Who was watching us? We're not exciting. There's nothing to see here. What is this drone doing here? It was Erie seeing it just stay in the same area. It made me question like, okay, are we doing something wrong? Am I at the wrong campsite? It made me feel uncomfortable. My initial instinct was that it was just the owners checking on their campers. And I went back to playing cards with my family. I can still hear the buzz. And I look up and it's still there. Four hands later, it's still there. So I actually messaged the camp owner about it. Hey, is this you? Like, I thought maybe she did that to check on campers. You can see if everything's okay because it's kind of off the road a little bit. Basically, her response was that, no, that wasn't us. That was weird. Also made me feel kind of uncomfortable. But at the end of the day, it's, you know, not that big of a deal, I guess. It's maybe early afternoon and my 13-year-old nephew and I, we decided we were going to swim. We were swimming and it was great. It was so hot out, why didn't we do this sooner? My nephew, he really wanted to get one of the paddle boats that was across the lake. He said he was going to swim over there. It's kind of far so I could sort of see what he was doing. I could tell he had to move some things to get the paddle boat that he wanted. Eventually, he paddled all the way back over. He said, "Did you see that guy in the dog?"
"I couldn't see anybody with him. He looked completely alone. I didn't see anybody talking to him. Nothing." I said no. Yeah, it was some guy with a mastiff. It was a big dog. I thought that was really weird. I just kind of chalked it up to not being able to see that far. The only reason he probably said anything was because it was weird to him. We thought that we were alone at this lake. We didn't see any other cars. There were no other tents. We didn't notice anything until he swam over there and came back and said he saw this guy in his dog. It was getting closer to like dinner time now. While we're kind of talking about making dinner, one of my brothers goes down to the bathrooms and he takes his dog with him. He comes back. He saw the guy with the mastiff. This whole time, I have not seen this guy or this dog yet, two people in our group have seen him and have interacted with him in one way or another. As we started to prep for dinner, kind of out of nowhere, this big storm came through. It was a lot of wind. It was a lot of rain. After the storm, everything was just soaked. Everything was wet and muddy and it was so hot and humid that nothing was ever going to dry. So we had sort of just like accepted that this is going to be miserable. Let's just get through this night and then tomorrow we have showers and air conditioning. We all went to bed in our muddy campsite in the middle of the night. I had to get up and use the bathroom. Outside in the middle of the night, by myself, I just did not feel alone. I felt so uncomfortable. I hustled back to my tent and I don't normally do that. So I hustled back to my tent, climbed in with the dogs. I really didn't sleep the rest of the night. It might have been a paranoia that I was being watched. I definitely did not feel alone. The next morning, getting ready to head out, we're going to pack our stuff up and we're going to go take showers and get some AC. It's going to be great. We thought we would kind of enjoy just like one last morning on the lake. It's so beautiful early in the morning. You know, the sun's just kind of glistening off of it. It's so quiet. We're just enjoying our coffee hanging out. Across the lake, we see two large black trucks roll up. A bunch of guys get out and it looks like they're doing tactical maneuvers, running around the trees. They ran off into this wooded section. I kind of thought that it was just a bunch of guys going to play a paintball or something. Then we don't see anything. There's no movement. Out of a loudspeaker on the trucks. The ride of the Valkyries. And that makes us perk up because we are in the middle of nowhere on a campsite. These two black trucks roll up and they're blasting ride of the Valkyries. They maybe play like 30 seconds of it. And then it shuts off. And then again, on the loudspeaker comes a voice that says, what is happening? Trying to figure out what's going on. But we still can't really like see that far. After we hear this drop the bag and get on the ground, there's some action and then some guys get in the trucks and the trucks leave. As we're kind of talking about packing up and heading out early, a helicopter comes in and a helicopter starts circling the lake. We're far enough from civilization, highways. This is not the traffic guy for the morning commute. And then a second helicopter shows up and it's circling. It's about this time. We're going to get out of here right now. Pack your shit. We're going now. Things clearly went sideways somewhere. We want to leave as soon as possible. Everything was wet, balled up, thrown in the back of the trucks. We were out of there. I knew that the helicopters and the drone could see us. Everybody knew what we were doing. We're in all three vehicles. We're starting to kind of leave and pull away from the lake and you have to go up this hill towards the top of the hill as I'm leading this caravan. Six heavily armed men. Full combat gear come over the hill with firearms pointed straight at me. I throw it in park and I throw my hands out the window. They don't immediately approach. They get within shouting distance. And the first guy shouts to me, "Man, are you being held hostage?" I shout back, "No." Then immediately I was worried because I had two dogs in the back, but the windows were tinted. Maybe they see movement in the back of my truck. I shouted at him, I said, "I have two large dogs in the back." Here's like we see them. They flanked all three of our vehicles and searched us. They kind of checked in the cabs of the trucks. The beds were covered. We opened the tailgates of the trucks. I don't know what they thought was going to be in there. They were fully prepared to defend themselves. They all had conversations with each one of us and our vehicles. They eventually cleared us. Still had no information about what was going on. We started to pull away and then kind of out of nowhere, an unmarked vehicle came up right next to me and said he was going to escort me out. Again, this campsite is way back there. So it's like a mile off of the road. We get all the way out and we're coming over that last hill. It's just filled with agency vehicles. There's sheriff, there's staties, marshals. There were SWAT vehicles, ambulance. The level of attention put towards whatever was going on at that campsite was astounding and surprising. We got up to where all the vehicles were and they checked our vehicles again. They had to clear us one more time. I still didn't ask a lot of questions. I think I was just shocked and intimidated by everything that was going on. When we got to leave, my brothers and I checked in and we're like, let's just go up to this place and we'll sit down and grab something to eat and just kind of compare notes. We get up to this restaurant at the road and we're all out on the patio with the dogs. One brother is kind of googling things in the county, like trying to figure out if the local authorities put out a notice or something like that. As we're comparing stories, that's when my older brother, he says, one of the officers came up. They showed him three pictures. The first picture was a picture of a woman. Have you seen this woman? No, we haven't seen this woman. Second picture was a picture of a man. No, we haven't seen this man. The third picture was a picture of the mastiff. And of course, everybody has seen that mastiff. Everybody except me saw that mastiff the day before. I guess one of the officers told my brother that when we heard the drop the bag and get on the ground, in that bag, they found guns and pipe bombs. While we were comparing notes, my younger brother was trying to figure out what actually went on there. He found through one of the local posts, the wanted poster for the man in question. It was his picture. It was his charges. This was a man hunt. Wearing Kentucky, he was wanted in North Carolina for some really horrific stuff. He was hiding out, states away in a lonely campsite in the millenower. And he had this woman and dog with him.
They ultimately found him and that campsite, but it was another three days When the sheriff or the local authorities posted that wanted poster of him They of course had the notice to the public there It basically said that we encourage citizens to lock their homes and vehicles and stay inside When I read that That made me think back to that moment in the middle of the night when I was outside my tent All by myself Absolutely vulnerable We thought we were the only people there for a full day You kind of run through the worst case scenarios in your head Yeah, I'm really thankful that we're all fine and got away from that unscathed, but It's kind of terrifying to think about what could have happened for people that were in a desperate situation Oh My damn did you hear that shit? Yo, who needs die hard when you got your stories like that? Shit, all the helicopters fight in the Valkyries blasted on a SWAT team swat him that shit was crazy Okay, all right, it says we're supposed to cut to ads that literally doesn't make any sense to me I don't know what that means, but it says here. Don't worry. It'll just happen. I don't sound like a tee up for anything good So I guess Enjoy the ads. I wonder if I should keep talking or if eventually it'll just cut me off if Are we back? Okay, yeah, we're back from ads How does this even work? I don't really understand that. Oh wait, let's grab Thank you to our wonderful sponsors Okay, let's just do another tape. I'm kind of into this. I didn't really initially want to be a sign man You were labeled a day, but I guess it's going to happen This is a good good right here, you know, all right here. Here we go. I tape number two I was 13 years old and I was being raised by my grandparents We lived in a little tourist town in Florida My grandparents had problems with their two daughters as adults and they wanted to do everything that they could to make sure that the Grandkids didn't turn out the same way They ended up raising all three of us So needless to say they were very strict My aunt she understood what it was like to be raised by them because they had always been strict They were stricter with us, but she totally understood from coming from the same family She made sure that I got to do a little bit of the funner things Things that my grandparents definitely wouldn't approve of I would stay over Saturday nights. We would go out and hang out at the local fishing pier She'd let me hang out with my middle school boyfriend who would find ways to get wherever I was His dad would drive him or whatever One night we were having fun My aunt she said that she met a guy named RJ They really headed off They exchanged numbers Well, they ended up going out a little bit more and then I was introduced to him And he was super nice, super charming, handsome, seemed confident, caring He looked like the total package About two weeks after this we were hanging out at the pier You'd place me in my aunt like to go We were out by the payphones talking about what are we going to have for dinner, what are we going to do tonight I don't know where just randomly RJ said that he had pain pills I don't know if they were prescribed to him I didn't look at the label because he had that part facing his hand All I could see was the orange bottle Well, he took him out kind of like shook him around and then he offered me one I declined I told him I had a high tolerance to paint anyway and didn't really need to take anything like that Then with a huge smile on his face he asked me if he can see for himself And I thought he was joking I went along with it and I'm like okay He takes my arm and he puts it behind my back He's like I'm not really going to hurt you don't worry Well, he twists it behind my back Enough to where I hear a pop And then a searing pain radiates through my arm Guy threw him off me I yanked my arm away and I was like you know that really hurt was wrong with you What is your problem? I was really upset And he laughs and he's like oh I was only playing with you You said you had a high tolerance I guess I was stronger than I thought I was Come on now. I didn't mean to hurt you Let's not ruin the good time that we're having we're supposed to be having a nice night Don't make a big deal out of it Well, I pretended like I was somewhat okay And then I went into the manager's office in the back of the pier and I closed the door and I cried My aunt comes in and lets me know that she thinks it's messed up too and that she talked to him about it How can I fix this I've already talked to him about it how can I fix this At that point she was kind of afraid that I was wanting to go home I did I wanted to go home. I would rather be with my grandparents watching the golden girls and my room or something Than have to be around the people that put me in that situation anymore She goes back outside and he asks her what she's up to that night She tells him she isn't sure if I'm gonna stay over because of what happens He you know puts on the charm super smiley super big Real charming when he wants to be and he's like oh no, I'm so sorry. Hey, you know go on go on home with your aunt You know go to her house and she can fix you some food And then he talked to my aunt and he asked her to meet him under a bridge in our town He said to meet him there at like two o'clock in the morning Well, she felt bad about what happened So she invited me to come with you know said that she would make it fun We'd make some fun memories and try to make up to save the day To sweeten the deal she says that my boyfriend at the time can come with us So I was like yeah, if he can come with that's fine. We'll go I won't bother you We'll go and we'll walk off over here and you guys can stay on do your thing whatever So she calls RJ Good news. I'm gonna meet you my niece said that she'd come with and I'm bringing her boyfriend. So she has somebody to be there with She's not gonna bother us. She's gonna have a good time. We're gonna have a good time. Everything is gonna be fine The minute he found out there was another person coming He got really upset like ridiculously upset He gave my aunt a guilt trip talking about how He just wanted to spend some time with her and be in a relationship Talking about how he didn't sign up to be a babysitter But he's screaming I could hear him through the phone and I was like a good five six feet away from my aunt like he was furious She was caught off guard by this reaction and he was being really mean to her Saying mean stuff being you know manipulative trying to make her feel bad They break up that night He calls her a few more times and he drives by the house back and forth for about a couple months afterwards Do look out and you'd see him kind of drive by kind of slow She didn't want anything to do with him He stopped driving by He was soon forgotten. We went about our business as a family One day my friend and I missed the bus home We called our friend Darla to pick us up She had this beautiful big red truck. I would ride around in the cab of it loving the wind the freedom And the time that I would have spent on the bus getting home because I was one of the last stops By the time I got home my parents wouldn't really know a difference. I wouldn't be gone of Alarmingly long amount of time and every time she would come home and she would walk me to the door She would greet my parents. They would thank her for you know bringing me home and it wasn't a big deal I noticed about a month after the last time I hung out with her She didn't show up to work she missed five days I didn't know if she had quit or what was going on Then I heard she wasn't at home either And I just assumed that she ran away I knew that there were things going on
in her life that she wasn't happy with, which I mean for a teenage girl, you know, that's pretty common. I thought she ran away. Her truck wasn't left behind. She had her truck with her, so I didn't really worried. I figured she'd get a hold of me when she was settled or when she was ready to or when she had calmed down or even when she came back. I missed her, but she wasn't a whole other league than me. She was driving age. I wished her the best. I hadn't heard anything for about three and a half weeks, and we stopped talking about it. A little over two years later, it was nine o'clock at night when my grandparents got a phone call to turn on the news. My friend Darla's body was found in the woods. She'd been strangled to death and then just left there. I don't even know for how long. I was devastated, sad and and horrified at the same time. She was barely two years older than me. The whole town was really upset and saddened by this. Along with the report on the news, they released a picture of the man who had done it. They found a whole bunch of incriminating evidence and during questioning, he not only confessed to killing her, but he confessed to killing his father. He was a very, very frail, sweet little old man in a wheelchair. When his father died, he staged it to look like a suicide by hanging. They showed his mug shot on the screen and they said his name and everything around me went white. My body went cold. This was a person that I never thought I would even think of again. And here he was on the TV just staring back at us. It was Ralph John Fabe a junior, RJ. The same RJ that I rode around with with my aunt, the same RJ that twisted my arm behind my back. The same RJ that probably would have killed me in my aunt if we had met him under the bridge that night. It's absolutely terrifying to know that you were that close to a killer. I'm 38 years old and I have an amazing husband and three boys. I don't know if I would have had any of that today if we had shown up that night. That was dark man. These tapes are no joke. It's fucking insane man. I used to add it's creepy neighbor. I used to have vibes just like that but then he died. So I was like damn I guess. I guess he wasn't okay. He just I don't know what to make of those powers. I'm saying I stay away from him anyway. All right time for those ads to start again however that worked. Okay we're back. Hold on. That's the script here. Well my dear friend. I don't ever say that. Thanks for joining me again at Radio Renton. I hope you got your daily dose of thrills. Still yarning for more. Come back and see me again next week until then sleep tight and don't let the radio rentals bite. Damn you know we don't hear the word yarning a lot. Yarning. What a great word. I really not saying yarning enough. We don't say it enough in our music. I never heard a rapper say yarning you know. I'm yarning. Wait a minute. Did this just say next week? I'm sorry am I supposed to be here next week? Damn I'm going to need to take off time. My real job. Tell my kids what I'm doing because right now I'm just gone. Jerry has kids. Radio rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenorfoot TV. Showrunner is Meredith Stedman. Lead producer is Eric Kintana. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright. Our main host is Rain Wilson as his character Terry Carnation. Written by Meredith Stedman, additional writing by Mark Locklin, original score by Makeup and Vanity Set, with additional score by J. Ragsdale, editing by Eric Kintana, Steven Perez, Meredith Stedman, Tristan Bankston, and Sean Nerney. Sound design mix and master by Steven Perez and Cooper Skinner, additional editing by April Ruha and Dayton Cole. Our production manager is Jordan Foxworthy. Our social media manager is Caroline Orajema, video editing by Dylan Harrington. Cover artwork by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan. Radio rental merchandise by Byron McCoy. To shop Radio rental merch, visit shop.tenorfoot.tv. Special thanks to Orren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, as well as the Nord Group and the team at Odyssey. If you have a radio rental story that you'd like to share, please email us at
[email protected] or contact us via the form on our website radiorentalusa.com. Follow us on Instagram at Radio rental. On behalf of the Radio Rental store, we'd love it if you'd subscribe, rate, and review. As always, thanks for listening.
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